As a white anti-racism educator, I have encountered “white fragility” for years in students, colleagues, community members, and, of course, in myself. I just didn’t have a framework for naming it and understanding it. Robin DiAngelo’s new book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism (Beacon, 2018) provides just that, with clarity and insight.

At the beginning of her book, DiAngelo explains how the US “is deeply separate and unequal by race, and white people are the beneficiaries of that separation and inequality” (1). In other words, white supremacy and systemic racism exist, and they are fueled by different forms of segregation. She goes on to say, “Given how seldom we [white people] experience racial discomfort in a society we dominate, we haven’t had to build our racial stamina. Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority that we either are unaware of or can never admit to ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race. We consider a challenge to our racial world-views as a challenge to our very identities as good, moral people” (1-2). Hence: white fragility. We know racism is bad. We don’t want to be bad. Therefore, we deny or otherwise cannot effectively acknowledge our complicity in racism and cannot engage in even a conversation about racism, unless it focuses on a far away racist.

One of the core challenges that white readers may potentially face with this book is the very concept of naming “white people” as a group of people when white people have been taught we are individuals. “It’s not fair to generalize about white people,” is a response this book is likely to prompt. But that is exactly the point DiAngelo is making: the fact that white people have been taught we are individuals is actually a function of white supremacy because we are the only ones who have been taught that. We take for granted the normalization of whiteness, and we tend not to identify other white people as white but simply as people, while black people are not identified as people, but as “black.” Everyone else is racialized while we are just “people.”

That way of thinking is something that was invented, and it was only invented a few hundred years ago. My own work, Dismantling the Racism Machine: A Manual and Toolbox, elaborates on this concept of the invention of race (or the social construction of race).

As DiAngelo makes clear, white people have been taught multiple intersecting ideologies that uphold white supremacy while simultaneously obscuring it:

White people are individuals

Just work hard and you’ll be successful (the American dream of meritocracy)

Everyone is the same – be colorblind

It’s not polite to talk about race

Racism occurs from intentional acts of malice

While the above ideologies may be taught explicitly, several other beliefs are also taught, though perhaps in less explicit ways, but they still work to uphold white supremacy:

White people don’t have a race

White people are superior

White people belong

Interestingly, at the same time as white people are taught that we don’t have a race, we’re also taught white people are superior and that we belong. Yes, whiteness is a series of contradictions, and I would say one reason for these contradictions emerges because whiteness is not real. It’s a made-up idea to equate light color skin with value. It’s not an inherently natural human quality to have that belief. It’s a belief that was taught, and so it’s not surprising that contradictions emerge when something that isn’t real, whose borders are constantly negotiated, is being desperately protected.

This complex web of intersecting ideologies is so dense that even just trying to sort out one thread at a time is a challenge. However, White Fragility gives us a place to begin by focusing on the psychology of whiteness. What is it white people have been taught about race so that we react to conversations about it in ways that we do? And, why does this occur? One reason DiAngelo gives is that “the majority of white people live in racial isolation from people of color (and black people in particular) and have very few authentic cross-racial relationships” (31-32). I can see this so well in my own state of New Jersey which, despite being in the North and being so diverse, is actually one of the most racially segregated states in the country. DiAngelo goes on to explain that because so many white people experience “racial isolation” then they are especially vulnerable to stereotypical messages in the media about people of color.

White Fragility is filled with valuable resources, including data, as well as lists of strategies for recognizing how white fragility is a form of bullying. Her interpersonal techniques, questions for reflection, and concrete examples of white fragility in the workplace all help ensure that this book does not only present a valuable theory but also a practical set of tools.

NJ7 Citizens for Change just published my blog “What Does White Complicity Look Like?” which I wrote after visiting the On Whiteness exhibit at the Racial Imaginary Institute hosted at The Kitchen in NYC.

As a child, I remember carrying the American flag for my Girl Scout troupe in a 4th of July parade, loving fireworks, and wanting to celebrate this country. After all, why wouldn’t I? I had all of the unearned advantages that came with my white, middle-class, suburban existence. And just like other white people, I was taught that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were available to everyone in the US.

Now, as an adult who identifies as a white anti-racist educator, it’s clear to me that there is a significant gap between what scholars who study race take for granted and what the public, especially white people, know about race and racism.

We approach this 4th of July with daily reports of family separation, immigrant detention, pervasive racism, mass shootings, diminishing union power, cuts to reproductive rights, a travel ban, voter suppression, a racial wealth gap, lessening workers’ rights, and the specter of a far right wing Supreme Court. Many white people who are disturbed or even horrified by these problems may be wondering: What exactly does the 4th of July mean? Should I celebrate it?

These are likely questions that people of color and other marginalized people are not suddenly asking themselves for the first time. After all, Frederick Douglass asked in 1852, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?”

Most white people in the US have been taught that the principles of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” apply to everyone, at least in the years since the civil rights movement. They have been taught a narrative that depicts their European ancestors as immigrants who became successful because of their hard work. They are not taught that their success in the land of opportunity depended on their whiteness. So, it should not be a surprise that following this narrative, many white people, when confronted with examples of people of color not being economically successful, attribute it to laziness. “Just work hard,” like they did, and they’d be successful. Undocumented immigrants should just “get in line” like their ancestors did, and they’d be successful.

The narrative of the 4th of July is that we should be patriotic, that America is a place of freedom and opportunity. Believing all of that is reassuring. It feels good. It doesn’t disrupt. However, believing that continues to maintain the false narrative that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were and are meant for everyone when in fact these principles only apply to those seen as fully human. Through the invention of race, whiteness was created as a racial category and as the only one that was fully human. This racial ideology established a racial hierarchy that positioned white people at the top as superior, black people at the bottom as inferior and less than human, and indigenous peoples, Latinx people, and Asian Americans in various intermediary spots depending on the historical moment.

Many white people who were upset about Trump’s election and who have resisted his rhetoric and policies ever since support a narrative that our current administration is an aberration and that we just need to get back to the way things are supposed to be, believing that prior to Trump’s administration, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were generally available to everyone. We hear the phrase “This is not normal,” as if what came before was “normal.” In other words, what came before was ok. I would urge people to reconsider this mindset and think about how “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were never meant for everyone: injustice is the norm.

Our nation was founded on European imperial conquest for land, wealth, and resources, and that was made possible through land theft, genocide, and slavery. These are not a stain that can be washed away, leaving behind something pure and just. These oppressive actions and ideologies are built into our institutions, built into our very nationhood. (Please see my blog page “Resources on Race and Racism” for numerous examples.)

White people have a hard enough time reconciling the state of America today with what they imagine it to be in their mind. But to reconcile that America has never been what they imagine it to be is the real challenge. The Trump administration might seem different than what came before, and of course there are differences, but it is just an extreme example of an oppressive status quo we’ve always had.

Like many of you, I recently attended a Families Belong Together rally and march on June 30. That day and on many other days in recent weeks, I’ve heard white people say something like, “This is not the America that I know.” This is not the America that most white people know, but it is the America that people of color and other marginalized people have always known. That disconnect demands our attention. When we say, “This is not the America that I know,” it erases a history of African slavery, indigenous genocide, Chinese Exclusion, Jim Crow segregation, lynching, deportation of American citizens of Mexican descent, internment of Japanese Americans, and so much more.

So on the 4th of July, when we are asked to celebrate America, what if we finally start recognizing that the only way “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are available to everyone is if they are actually available to everyone? We will never get there if we remain indoctrinated to the myths we are so often taught, myths that might provide us with some privileges but are ultimately meant to control us by keeping us at the mercy of a system of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy. (My book Dismantling the Racism Machine: A Manual and Toolbox explains these false ideologies that perpetuate racism through a divide-and-conquer strategy.)

To unquestionably celebrate the 4th of July means to perpetuate the lie, the myth that maintains the status quo of white supremacy. Confronting what America has always been does not mean I recommend leaving the US. My bags are not packed for Canada. I want to stay here and work for justice. To me, that means confronting the false ideologies we’ve been indoctrinated into, educating others, including white children, having difficult conversations with other white people, and taking action to support leadership from marginalized communities. I strongly believe that it is only when the most marginalized are free that we are all free.

I just returned from the Working-Class Studies Association conference held at Stony Brook University filled with inspiration. This conference is such an important opportunity to do what we don’t do enough, both inside and outside of academia: critique and resist the destructive forces of capitalism, listen to people in poverty, support working-class academics, and appreciate the work being done in the field of working-class studies. Unlike many other academic conferences, this conference, co-hosted this year by the Center for the Study of Inequalities, Social Justice, and Policy, provides a supportive and encouraging environment for graduate students and senior faculty alike to exchange ideas about teaching, scholarship, and the world around us. I’d like to identify a few ideas and questions that I’m still thinking about and then recognize the work that caught my attention:

Children in wealthy families, which are predominantly white, receive access to various resources that have a significant impact on their financial security, yet this dynamic is often invisible and obscured by the rhetoric of “just work hard and you’ll be successful.” Furthermore, the concentration of wealth at the top has been increasing, not decreasing, while the narrative of the American dream persists.

Have we become more materialistic and consumer-driven during the past few decades?

How does the narrative and ideology of individualism affect us and intersect with class, race, gender, and more?

As more women become graduate students and faculty members, academia is becoming increasingly precarious.

What are all of the ways that neo-liberalism is affecting us?

What responsibility do fulltime, tenured faculty have to change the culture of higher education in order to improve the working conditions for adjunct faculty, change the publish or perish culture, and help graduate students complete rather than make it harder?

How can we center the activism and inspiring work of new generations of activists through the movements of the Dreamers, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and the March for Our Lives?

What do college students in poverty want their faculty to know and do?

How can poverty be at the center of discussions (and conferences) about class?

Why are the middle class white men and women who voted for Trump ignored when talking about Trump voters, as if the only people who voted for him were working class whites and as if all working class whites voted for him?

While there were many impressive presentations, roundtables, and other discussions, I was especially inspired by the following:

Rhonda Y. Williams’ brilliant presentation/performance about division

Tamara Draut of Demos described their work on addressing racial and economic justice together

Journalists from the Nation (Michelle Chen, Bryce Covert, and John Washington) described their powerful and much-needed investigative reporting

Jessi Straub’s analysis of luck and Jeremy Posadas’s analysis of disposability and intersectionality

It was exciting to participate in discussions about the forthcoming book The Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies, edited by Michele Fazio, Christie Launius, and Tim Strangleman. I’m working on an essay for the chapter on activism, and this discussion and the conference overall helped me think through my ideas and pushed me to work on making a greater contribution, with the idea of the endless possibilities that can arise when we center the experiences of the community college when we talk about higher education. How can we teach activism in the classroom, and why should we? How can we, as faculty, take our work outside of the classroom into the public as a form of activism, and why should we?

I created this blog in 2014 when my book project was still a jumble of ideas without a clear shape. Now, I am so grateful for all of the support and feedback and inspiration I received to get to the point of publication. Dismantling the Racism Machine: A Manual and Toolbox is an accessible introduction to race and racism with tools for action. My goal is to contribute to the never-ending and much-needed process of raising awareness about the myths we have been taught about race and racism. White people in particular have been taught a set of false beliefs that maintain the status quo, that perpetuate structural racism. Unlearning these myths is one step toward ending white supremacy. I would love your help getting the word out about my book. There’s a tab on this blog devoted to the book, with blurbs and updated publicity. Furthermore, all of the resources on this blog website are dedicated to supporting the work of this book, of resisting myths that support white supremacy in order to dismantle racism.

Can you spread the word about this book by writing a book review? An Amazon review? Promoting it on social media? Assigning it to your students? Urging your friends, colleagues, and family to read it? Recommending it as professional development for teachers, social workers, health care professionals, and more?

These days, it’s easy to focus all of our anti-racist attention on condemning the latest racist language from the President. However, we won’t make any progress if we focus all of our energy there. After all, that language only reflects a pattern of systemic racism that has persisted in this country since colonial America. We must focus our energy on tackling systems of oppression that allow racism, xenophobia, sexism, and other oppressions to continue. I humbly offer my book as one strategy for such work.